Up Next – Magdalena Zurawski & CA Conrad

The New Writing Series is delighted to welcome Magdalena Zurawski and CA Conrad to the UMaine campus for a special Friday afternoon event on January 30, 2009, at 4:30pm, in the Soderberg Auditorium in Jenness Hall. The reading is free and open to the public, though seating is limited.

Magdalena Zurawski was born in Newark NJ and grew up in Edison NJ, but Providence RI feels like home because that’s where she started writing and meeting writers and thinking of herself as a writer. Currently, she lives in Durham, NC, where she is studying 19th-century American literature at Duke. The Bruise, out now from Fiction Collective Two, is the winner of the 2006 Ronald Sukenick prize for innovative fiction. It is her first book.

CAConrad is the self-described son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He escaped to Philadelphia where he lives and writes with the PhillySound poets. His latest book The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009) received The Gil Ott Book Award. He is also the author of Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), (Soma)tic Midge (FAUX Press, 2008), and two forthcoming books, advanced ELVIS course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems (Factory School Press, 2009). He invites you to visit him online here.

CA Conrad & Magdalena Zurawski

Event Report – Richard Blanco

On January 22, 2009, Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco read to an audience of about 40 people in Soderberg Auditorium for the inaugural event of the Spring 2009 schedule. Steve Evans introduced the poet, who read for about 50 minutes from his two books City of a Hundred Fires and Directions to the Beach of the Dead. Afterward, Blanco fielded questions from audience members.

Poet Richard Blanco

For more photographs, visit the NWS Flickr page here. Artist John Bailly’s pictures from the event are on Facebook here.

An mp3 recording was made using an Audio-technical condenser Lo-Z AT835b microphone attached to a Marantz PMD660 Portable Solid State Recorder. The event was also recorded on digital video tape.

Spring 2009 Schedule

The University of Maine English Department and the National Poetry Foundation are pleased to announce the spring 2009 line-up for the New Writing Series.

22 JAN RICHARD BLANCO
30 JAN MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI & CA CONRAD note Friday event
19 FEB KENNETH GOLDSMITH
19 MAR STEVE GRADY AWARDS FOR CREATIVE WRITING
25 MAR CLAUDIA RANKINE • 8PM • ROOM TBA
02 APR NADA GORDON & GARY SULLIVAN
16 APR ALEXANDER IRVINE

Reading start at 4:30 sharp in the Soderberg Auditorium in Jenness Hall (except where otherwise noted). All events are free and open to the public (though seating is limited).

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The UMaine New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation with support from the Lloyd H. Elliot fund and the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series Committee. The NWS thanks its collaborators this spring, the UMaine Museum of Art (Richard Blanco reading), the Intermedia program (Kenneth Goldsmith), and the Honors College (Claudia Rankine reading). FMI e-mail Steve Evans on FC or call 581-3822.